


Nights Like This

by theclockiscomplete



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:00:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3206744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclockiscomplete/pseuds/theclockiscomplete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Clara are together again, but there are deep wounds that neither of them have yet been able to acknowledge or share...until one of those rare nights comes along and there's no more room for hiding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights Like This

**Author's Note:**

> So here's the deal: I woke up this morning at 2:04 AM and typed 600 words of fic on my phone before lying down and passing out again at 3:00. When I woke up, I had no memory of doing so until I turned on my phone and found myself on the memo page. I left the fic largely the way I found it since it didn't seem to suck, and added a bit of exposition/editing of autocorrect since I was semiconscious at best when i wrote it. Dreamself has major angst and none of the inhibitions. Enjoy.
> 
> Update: I am truly overwhelmed by your comments, and I am so glad each of you found something in my little story that touched you. Thank you so much for your feedback.

Nights like this were scary. At the console, watching telly in Clara’s flat, or overlooking a city (or planet) of sleeping inhabitants- it didn’t matter. There was a void between his hearts and if he was still for too long it threatened to turn him inside out with grief and loss. Nights like this, his knowledge worked against him. Countless stars and planets, and he knew the coordinates to the cores of the top one hundred hottest, reciting them under his breath when his thoughts got to be too much. Standing at the edge of a cliff, his sharp eye could gauge the distance from his shoes to the ground, his mind unconsciously spinning through the facts—how quick, how painful, and how hard his landing would be. Nights like this, he grips the railings of his ship because the cold, unyielding metal is all that feels real. He doesn’t understand. His Clara is here, finally, back where she belongs. His hearts haven’t felt so light in years. He doesn’t understand why he grieves for the loss of a home filled with a race who would burn the universe to achieve their own ends—and had actively tried once before. Nights like this, it doesn’t matter. It was home and it is lost and the only one who can save it is an old fool in a stolen TARDIS. An old fool who has started to soundlessly cry and can’t seem to stop.  
  
Nights like this were lonely. Wide awake in her flat or finding a rare moment to catch her breath on a foreign planet’s moon, if she hesitated, the constant pull in her chest gained mass and threatened to override the rationale that keeps her tightly tethered to life. Nights like this, it was easy to recall the strength to stay asleep those months ago when she knew all too well the world was a dream. It had been three months in her timeline since the dream crabs. Three months of beauty and danger that were at times indistinguishable, and never more so than when they came from the impossible man she’d willingly died for across space and time. He almost asked her about it once, just days after running hand in hand back to the TARDIS, grinning like idiots. She’d seen the question in his eyes, the way his long fingers moved from efficient switch-flipping to twitching and hovering just above the buttons and levers, and blurted the name of a planet she’d read about in a book the Doctor had left on the seat of the chair she’d claimed for herself. The water, though separate in nature from what the inhabitants of Earth would call “water,” was both bioluminescent and breathable, and they spent three days splashing about and exploring rainbow-hued rock beds and shimmering caves. And if the Doctor ever paused during a smile to scrutinize her face, or let a hand drift across her shoulder when he passed, neither of them mentioned it and he hadn’t tried to ask again. Staring up at the galaxy that served as her ceiling, Clara wishes for the first time that she’d let him. Nights like this, she wants nothing more than to curl up against her Doctor and allow the double beat of his hearts to remind hers how to work.  
  
But it was nights like this when magic could happen, too—when the tight limits of probability would take a breath and expand, and three hearts would find their way within eyeshot of one another in a place where time was a malleable and unknowable substance, where the possibilities of location were endless and endless. When Clara rounded to corner into the console room and found him standing in the open doorway, gazing into the slow-spinning formation of a star, she didn’t hesitate to take his hand the way he had taken hers so many times and lead him down the hall. She said nothing about the way his cheeks glistened in the starlight of her room or the way he was holding her hand so tight she could feel bone on bone. She laid a hand on the side of his face and when his eyes met hers, she saw the understanding in them that now was the time. Nights like this, there was no room for rough exteriors and confident smiles, for costumes or perfectly done hair. She helped him out of his jacket while he worked off his shoes, and then worked on the buttons of his collared shirt with steady hands. He let her go long enough to remove his outerwear, and gripped her hand, more lightly this time, as soon as he was down to his shirt and trousers. When he pulled the duvet over them and settled his head onto the pillow, it was to find the eyes of the person he held most dear, unguarded for the first time he could recall, staring into his.  
  
“Clara,” he whispered, and the tears were already welling up. He wrapped solid, pliant arms around her, and she buried her face into his chest. They cried for as long as they needed to, until the salt seeped into the deepest reaches of their wounds to begin to finally soothe the raw, untouchable aches that had become such a part of them as to seem irremovable and necessary. Nights like this, two people who meant the universe to one another could cling to each other on the edge of the wild dark and come out on the other side with the ability to share their burdens and together begin the search for peace. Nights like this were home.


End file.
